Computer Specialist Who Deleted Clinton Emails May Have Asked Reddit For Tips (usnews.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from U.S. News and World Report: An army of reddit users believes it has found evidence that former Hillary Clinton computer specialist Paul Combetta solicited free advice regarding Clinton's private email server from users of the popular web forum. A collaborative investigation showed a reddit user with the username stonetear requested help in relation to retaining and purging email messages after 60 days, and requested advice on how to remove a "VERY VIP" individual's email address from archived content. The requests match neatly with publicly known dates related to Clinton's use of a private email server while secretary of state. Stonetear has deleted the posts, but before doing so, the pages were archived by other individuals. "ARCHIVE EVERYTHING YOU CAN!!!!" a person wrote on a popular thread on the Donald Trump-supporting subreddit r/The_Donald, as the entries disappeared. There are several reasons to believe the reddit user is indeed Combetta, who was granted immunity by the Justice Department during its investigation of Clinton's private server after he deleted a large number of emails. The evidence connecting Combetta to the account is circumstantial, but also voluminous. The inactive website combetta.com is registered to the email address stonetear@gmail.com, a search of domain registration information using the service whois.com indicates. An account for a person named Paul Combetta on the web bazaar Etsy also has the username stonetear. And, perhaps most damningly, there are the dates. Stonetear posted to reddit on July 24, 2014: "Hello all- I may be facing a very interesting situation where I need to strip out a VIP's (VERY VIP) email address from a bunch of archived email that I have both in a live Exchange mailbox, as well as a PST file. Basically, they don't want the VIP's email address exposed to anyone, and want to be able to either strip out or replace the email address in the to/from fields in all of the emails we want to send out..." U.S. News and World Reports adds: "On July 23, 2014, the House Select Committee on Benghazi had reached an agreement with the State Department on the production of records, according to an FBI report released earlier this month on the bureau's probe of her email use." Stonetear submitted an additional post to reddit on Dec. 10, 2014 that reads: "Hello- I have a client who wants to push out a 60 day email retention policy for certain users. However, they also want these users to have a 'Save Folder' in their Exchange folder list where the users can drop items that they want to hang onto longer than the 60 day window. All email in any other folder in the mailbox should purge anything older than 60 days (should not apply to calendar or contact items of course). How would I go about this? Some combination of retention and managed folder policy?"

UPDATE 9/19/2016: Slashdot reader NotInHere points out that there is a Slashdot user named "StoneTear" as well.

Comments

just one thing to say

[isotope23]

Whoop There it is!

Re:just one thing to say

[amicusNYCL]

Without direct knowledge what was in those emails

Man, if only we had direct knowledge of what was in those emails. Oh well, it was probably nothing, right? They were probably just low on disk space or something. We can take her on her word, right?

Deleting emails seems trivial in that light.

But, how can you say that without direct knowledge of what was in the emails?

Re: just one thing to say

[Anonymous Coward]

Drinking the cool aid cannot account for your post. You must be snorting straight from the packet.....

VIP

[jvanber]

Very VIP, and I mean, Very, Very, Very VIP.

Re:VIP

[ravenshrike]

Brian Boitano?

To Paraphrase Captain Bligh . . .

[Kunedog]

The lies will continue until trust in Hillary improves.

Re:wow, completely clueless...

[Dread_ed]

Are you willing to put the survival of your employer above your own and will you do blatantly illegal things for them? Are you socially liberal but psychologically pathological? Have you misplaced your conscience so thoroughly you sometimes wonder if you ever had one? Have you kidnapped an albino child and sacrificed them to Yog-Sothoth over a deep ocean trench? If not, would you for the chance at $50k per year and mediocre benefits?

If so there is one of these jobs waiting for you! Just place the tattered remains of your soul in the receptacle and you're in! Please stay out of the sun for the rest of your life, which should last forever now.

Why would Clinton's supporters abandon her now?

[mi]

and I say that as one of her supporters.

When NY Times called her a "congenital liar" in 1996, the only question was, whether "congenital" was the right term — the "liar" was deemed quite apropos.

Fast forward 20 years to 2016, her loyal supporters — such as yourself — beg her to, please, stop lying .

So, her being a liar is well-known and perfectly established — and has been for many years. Presumably, all those lies have not been enough to dissuade her from supporting her until recently. Why are you abandoning her now, when she needs you most?